Congratulations! You’ve been accepted as the only human student at the prestigious St. PigeoNation’s Institute, a school for talented birds! Roam the halls and find love in between classes as a sophomore student at the world’s greatest pigeon high school.

User reviews:

Recent:

Very Positive (191 reviews) - 90% of the 191 user reviews in the last 30 days are positive.

Overall:

Very Positive (3,916 reviews) - 93% of the 3,916 user reviews for this game are positive.

December 15, 2015

https://youtu.be/r74cFDF7qUMHatoful Boyfriend: Holiday Star takes you back into the world of St. Pigeonations as the sole human girl at a school for gifted birds and every birdie from the first game returns with you! Whilst you get re-acquainted with familiar avian faces, the holidays bring with them a wide range of mysteries to unravel. The feathered figures at the heart of them will shock and surprise. Some will bring delight! Others something much more sinister...

Hatoful Boyfriend: Holiday Star is available now on PC, Mac, and Linux via Steam, GOG, and Humble and will be available on PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita December 22. Follow developer @Mediatonic and series creator @moa810 for more information on avian love and the Hatoful Boyfriend series.

December 9, 2015

About This Game

Congratulations! You’ve been accepted as the only human student at the prestigious St. PigeoNation’s Institute, a school for talented birds! Roam the halls and find love in between classes as a sophomore student at the world’s greatest pigeon high school. Finding happiness won’t be easy, but it’s not all academic - there’s always time for a little romance in this delightful remake of Hato Moa’s popular visual novel / avian dating sim Hatoful Boyfriend!

Please Note: No birds were hurt in the making of Hatoful Boyfriend. In fact, many found love.

An Avian Love Story: Chat with birds of every feather from narcoleptic school instructors to pigeon biker gangs on your way to flirty encounters potential suitors that set your hear aflutter. Spend time with the ones that strike your fancy and ditch the birds that prove to be a bore!

New Scenario and Ending: Series creator Hato Moa has created an all-new scenario and ending to discover in this exciting update for fans of the original game and brand-new Hatoful Boyfriend players!

Replayability to Fall in Love All Over Again: Build your own nest of intrigue within the St. PigeoNation’s Institute with genre-bending intertwining narratives, hidden stories, surprise paramours, and multiple endings sure to send you back to the start to try a new path and a different love interest.

Fowl Twists and Turns: Not everything is as it seems at St. PigeoNation’s Institute! Uncover dark conspiracies, unexpected twists, and hellish fiends bent on bringing on the apocalypse. Pick your dates wisely, and you’ll flap off into the distance with your one true love. Take the wrong turn, and you might just end up murdered in your bed.

I thought this was just going to be a cute little birdy romance game. I was wrong. Oh so wrong... The story I played through... made my stomech turn slightly. I tried to romance someone and it ended up so wrong... I feel so bad eating one of my classmates on accident... I mean I should have saw it coming but I did not... I guess at least he was tasty? I wonder how his brother would feel if I told him... But its okay because karma came back to bite me in the butt. At the end I was dismembered but a certain part of me was kept at his side forever.... A twisted love that even creeped me out rofl.

10/10 Would eat classmate again and be with my loved one in a Jar for a long time again.

I think it would be cool if the player character was more ambiguous, maybe not having a specific gender. (The struggle is real when you're a gay guy and you love dating sims) But other than that and minor gramatical errors, this game is hilarious and I love it, it's way different from other ones Ive seen because yanno we're romancing birds and I Love It. (Shuu is my boyfriend btw)

First of all, don't trust the 'average' review score - the topic of this particular game (pigeon dating) has attracted droves of people trying to be funny with one line review quips.

Simply speaking, the positive rating has me very very very confused because this is a terrible VN for the price.

Story aside, there are some major issues with the game itself:1) "Maximum text speed" actually means "scrolls a bit faster" so you need to click twice to clear every message if you are a decent reader. Extremely annoying.2) No setting to skip only scenes you haven't watched. You either skip or you don't, and if you miss new content too bad. This is made worse by how some of the endings are very similar (ie, basically the same ending except for an epilogue) but you need to replay the entire game, not knowing if there are new nuggets in the game. 3) Loading glitches, many times when I loaded it would not work and just show an empty text box. Needed to exit to title and load that way.

Main problems with the plot/art:1) If you are like me, part of the allure of VNs is looking at some cool anime characters. This game has virtually none of that. The teaser shots you see at the top of the store page are basically all there is, the rest of the "art" you can find by going to google and searching for "pigeon." Maybe spend some effort drawing characters in different poses? Nope, just the same cropped pigeon picture from google. In certain parts you may be lucky and get uncropped pigeon pictures when the game devs were lazy.2) There is a severe lack of development for all birds. It is not that uncommon, but "the bachelor syndrome" of going on 2 dates and falling in love forever for no apparent reason is alive and well. As such, the birds are super one-dimensional, from the mentally challenged pudding bird to the psycho daydreaming bird - they just rehash the same joke over and over, not changing or developing other sides to the birds at all.3) To build on #2, the game is generally not funny. A couple jokes initially could elicit a chuckle, but the joke rehash gets very tiring. As this game is a quasi-parody of dating sims, I don't think that's a good thing.4) The relationship scoring system is at best hidden, at worst useless. This is one of those games where the relationship stat is hidden and you need to guess where you stand with everyone. One of the major systems, where you pick your classes, is 100% useless in over half the endings.5) True ending - without using spoilers, this game tries to tie everything together in a grand true ending that answers all questions. You want to know why pigeons talk? Why there is a school for pigeons? The ending tells you! However, because the premise is so preposterous, the game just throws twist after twist at you, all of which are not coherent. From daddy issues to orphanages to secret agents, the game throws all the stereotypical tropes you could possibly dream up in one jumbled mess. To be fair, the ending does actually flesh out the characters somewhat and probably takes a solid couple hours to get through. Of course the content in the true ending is probably more than the content in the rest of the game combined, see #2.

Long review for me as I rarely disagree so much with popular opinion. Bottom line is that I would NOT recommend this game unless it was 90% off or something, it is simply a poor example of a VN. Of course if you want to write a one line quip of a pigeon dating sim then you have no choice?

This game had me laughing uncontrollably at the start, and nearly had me crying at the end. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and it's definitely worth playing. It makes you feel a surprising amount of feels for a game about birds, so be prepared!

I always thought this game was a parody. Some positive reviews here said that it was indeed, but it had a beautifully written story behind and it made them cry. As a sucker for romantic visual novels, once this game was on sale, I though "heh, why not?", and got it. At first I was enjoying it, it was so silly - random pidgeons talking and interacting with the dumb human (my name was PruPruu Bakaw, I was trying to fit in ;__;) and saying silly things like "everybirdie" - it actually made me laugh.My first playthrough was incredibly short. I managed for two birds to fall in love and I got killed by a gang of hawks. What did I do to deserve such fate? I have no idea. My second playthrough was so unsatisfying. I ended up with the French dove and it was so bland! I gave up on this game after that. It had a lot of silly pidgeons. Maybe it was me, as I didn't get an awesome ending, I don't know. I don't recommend this game as a person who lives for the romantic parts of games :P

You say to yourself "I'm ready to try the pigeon dating sim" but you are not. It is so strange. It took me a couple tries to get through the introduction because it's just so weird. Other than all the boys being pigeons, the story's pretty much the same as any visual novel out of Japan.

Even at the fastest text speed, the text appears incredibly slowly. When choosing a response, I frequently have to click repeatedly before the game responds. The stat building system is really weak.

If you're into visual novels, you'll probably want to be able to say "Oh yeah, I played the pigeon one" eventually. Just wait until it's on sale.

Did it just for fun because ROMANCE WITH BIRDS, RIGHT ?! but happened to have a really good plot when you're patient enough to go through all ends (I mean who would have thought it would end like this :d)

I...have no words. I found this game because I saw someone start to play it and never finished. With the sale by its developer and all, Hatoful seemed like something I could use to pass the time.

But oh, was it so much more than that.

Going in with expectations of silly flirtations with birds, I wasn't disappointed. Some of the routes gave that silly, fluffy ending I expected. However, there is a much darker side to the game that, once discovered, will leave you rocked to your core. There is so much more to this game than silly flirtations...it's a true work of art. Once you see the truth and the backstory behind it all...you'll be grateful you got the game.

So my friend and I bought this game to have some cheeky giggles. And cheeky giggles were made. I aimed for Sakuya first, as did my friend. I succeeded, he died. It was good.

When I got this game, I read the reviews.People said it got deep.I was like psh, nothing I cannot handle.

I played through the first story.Some parts actually got me. I was like wow, this is deep. Ryouta's mother's death, Nageki's backstory, definitely hit harder The game however, had a few laughs here and there and certainly did not look like it would be deep.

However, there is a second story, a much longer story.This was a surprising turn on what the game looks to be.

The story was very interesting, very well constructed.It was especially refreshing being able to play as another character, albeit not being able to choose.

The length was great.The content was not only interesting, but deep and immersive.

I don't entirely agree with the price, however I got this game whilst on sale, which was a great price.

Regardless, I would definitely recommend this game to everyone, friends, family and random strangers. Even birds. the doctor is mine

This game is INSANE. And I love it! It's hilarious and depressing at the same time, it's ridiculous, yet smart, but most importantly, surprisingly complex and more deep than you could ever imagine. Give it a try if you haven't already. You won't be disappointed.

I bought it so I could play a goofy game about dating pigeons and making excessive bird puns. I got that along with a nice dose of emotional trauma and a crippling case of the feels. I am ruined.

10/10

In reality, this game is much better than I expected. It's cute and clever but also has a great cast of characters and a suprisingly dark backstory which you find out over the course of several playthroughs. As you get enough endings a full, much longer addition to the story is unlocked, taking it from a cute story about what beans to buy your date to a full-on political murder mystery.

However weird you think the game is, I can promise that it's much, much weirder. And I love it.

Going into this game I expected some Japanese weirdness and a substantially well-written story. It didn't disappoint, quite the opposite actually. All good and well.

After doing all "routes" for completion's sake, the game unlocked a... well, to call it anything else than an "experience" wouldn't do it justice. I shouldn't say anything more about this except that it's good.

I don't know where to even begin with this game. Hatoful was bought for me by a close friend who thought that a bird dating simulator would be a nice joke gift for someone who likes birds so much. Initially, I believed this game would be funny and cute. I was very excited to play it, and the first few introductory pages in the game were hilarious. I absolutely loved it. What I did not expect, however, is that this game is an incredible source of mental and emotional trauma. Never in my life have I been equally terrified of and strangely attracted to an anime bird until now. I am very confused and scared. HB is both absolutely ridiculous and eerily macabre. 10/10, best bird dating sim

WARNING! Based on forums, this game may trigger high level of depression called "Avatar Effect" play it on your own risk!

You think that birds are dumb primitive creatures? Not true! For example, pigeons are learning and teaching matematics and music, they have complex relationships with each other. I had problems with japanese names. As a mid-European kid, i fell far from the manga genre, grew up on american comics and though i have my own manga favourites, i was not able to get too close enough to the genre. I remember the great battles of Yu Yu Hakusho with Yusuke Urameshi and Kazuma Kuwabara, the midriff tearing brilliant humorous moments of Slayers with Lina Inverse and Gourry Gabriev, or DBZ's Shongoku, before it was banned from my country. But that's it.

I read about Hatoful Boyfriend on hungarian gaming sites, there are no animal pornography, and too much foolish detailed conversations bout it, as they told. The protagonist is a human girl, the other actors are mostly male pigeons, they have been introduced themselves early at the story. Many lives, many fates, player deciding what will happen next, there are silly and realistic, serious topics too, it depends on us what kind of ending we get. There are a lot, so the re-playability of the game is high, it is like visiting parallel dimensions. The characters are very well personalized and all different lovely fellas, i don't want to spolier anything so i better stop here.The music is very great, reminding me for the music of early Sims games, relaxing, there are 1-2 rock tracks too, reflecting for the current topic's mood.Locations are drawn, with bird photos, and some drawn manga characters if we enable them at start.

This product is not that i've imagined based on the media, it is much, much more! Comedy and tragedy, with big plot twists at the end.

Did it just for fun because ROMANCE WITH BIRDS, RIGHT ?! but happened to have a really good plot when you're patient enough to go through all ends (I mean who would have thought it would end like this :d)